February 28, 2008	Thursday	Safar 20 ,1429

KABUL: Efforts to promote pace in Afghanistan are not succeeding as they do not address local disputes which are exploited by Taliban insurgents to widen the conflict, a leading British charity said on Thursday.

The Oxfam report is the latest voice in a chorus of recent criticism of international aid and military strategy which has failed to bring peace and development to Afghanistan more than six years after US-led and Afghan forces ousted the Taliban.

“Existing, high-level measures to promote peace in Afghanistan are not succeeding,” Matt Waldman, Oxfam’s policy director in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

“This is not only due to the revival of the Taliban, but because insecurity often has local causes such as disputes over land, water and family concerns. In many cases these local disputes can turn violent and escalate into factional conflict.”An Oxfam survey found that while Afghans see the Taliban, warlords and criminals as their biggest threat, disputes over land and water are the biggest cause of insecurity in their daily lives.

“Whilst local disputes don’t attract the same headlines as the Taliban, they cause insecurity, undermine quality of life and hinder development efforts,” Waldman said. “Militants and criminal groups also exploit local conflicts and rivalries.”Decades of war and displacement have exacerbated local disputes across Afghanistan and have also weakened social cohesion which would normally limit the potential for conflict.

Oxfam called for more effort to promote local councils, or shuras, which most Afghans turn to in order to resolve disputes.

Two years after the Taliban relaunched its fight to oust the pro-Western Afghan government and eject foreign forces, Nato commanders insist they are making steady progress to defeat the insurgency and bring much-needed development.

But a nationwide Taliban campaign of suicide bombings has undermined Afghan faith

in the government and its Western backers to deliver security and public opinion in some Western capitals is calling for a change in strategy or troop withdrawal.

Two independent US reports last month said Afghanistan risked reverting to a failed state and haven for international Islamists militants without urgent renewed international efforts to win the war and deliver on promises of development.

But US, British and Canadian leaders, whose troops have borne the brunt of the fighting in the traditional Taliban heartlands in southern and eastern Afghanistan, have so far failed to persuade European Nato powers to send more troops to join the fight in the south.

—Reuters